As Simple As Breathing
by pathomythic
Summary: On the day of a wedding comes a death to change everything.  Guy/Marian; vaguely timed after S02E10; AU  Written for the GXM Secret Santa 2011 on LJ.


**Title: As Simple as breathing**

**Author:** mythopathy

**Rating:** PG-13 for violence mostly. **Warnings:** OC death

**Summary:** On the day of a wedding comes a death to change everything. (Guy/Marian; vaguely timed after S02E10; AU). Written for the guyxmarian Secret Santa at LJ.

Perhaps he has had too much of that strong ale, a good ale but not for slacking your thirst, or perhaps it is that she has spent the entire evening after mass at his side but he cannot breathe, and all he can see is the crown of her head and the whorl of her ear and the curve of her shoulder during the feast. You are all I see and all I want. I don't know what I possess but take it and take me and perhaps you will love me for being yours like a dress that you wear even though its color has faded and its elbows are worn.

"One of the things I fear the most is that one day I will drink so much that I will confess everything," is what comes out instead when they are alone out in the chill of the night air and it seems a good enough compromise.

"Confess to me?" she asks raising her head, turning her focus on him. Breathe, fool.

"To someone who can never know." Her blue eyes laugh at him even if her lips do not. You drive me mad.

"You drive me mad."

Her face shutters him out in the blink of an eye. Distance. Anger. He did it again!

"Please, don't!" he pleads.

"I can leave if that will keep you sane," she says and turns away and back again restless and uncontainable like always.

"No!"

"Then what do you want from me?"

"Can you not tell that a look from you –" Both breaks me and mends me? He takes her hand because he cannot bear not to touch her, hold on to the little she lets him have.

"I want to earn a smile from you," he says remembering the last genuine smile from her and the impulsive embrace, and watches as the weight of his words settles on her features even if her eyes are fixed on their locked hands.

They are locked. Her grip is tight on his fingers. When she looks up at him her breath mingles with his, her lips are half open and the distance to them so short. I want to kiss you I want to kiss you. Your temple, your eyelids, the whorl of your ear, the line of your jaw, your lips.

"Can I kiss you?" he asks, it's the best he can do, but she is the one closing the distance and her lips are soft and pliant and her tongue playful. He sucks in air from her lungs and feels the flutter of her eyelashes from where her cheek is pressed to his before she withdraws.

It is as difficult for her to draw air as it is for him. "We are going about this the wrong way," she says, eyes dark. "I cannot be your conscience."

"Why not?" He sees her thinking, measuring the implications in her mind—at first she shies away—and the possibilities. "I want you to be my conscience." He kisses her first this time and perhaps she is distracted but she does not pull away.

"If I asked you now," he says in the pauses between tracing the path he had wished for before, "If I fell of my knees."

Her cheeks and lips are raw from his stubble but her hands have crawled to his collar and hold on tightly. I can change that for her.

"Marry me. You want me." She is in his arms. An impulsive embrace.

"Yes," she says and breathing is simple again.

oo0oo

They pulled Rose's body out of the river limp and bloated. Ham wiped her wet face with his sleeve and he kept leaving streaks of sawdust wherever he touched her cold clammy skin. It was obvious her wet clothes would not let her warm up. He drew her still body in his arms rubbing heat back into her as the women around them wailed and fathers kept their curious boys by their sides. They would rejoice with him soon when the blood returned to her cheeks. Soon.

Ham had only been gone for a day and a night. The gamekeeper had told him of a fallen oak, an ancient one and normally he wasn't allowed to fell those. Ham was the only one in the shire allowed to cut from the King's forest, the tax of which privilege he had failed to pay for the past year because of the boat. At that moment the oak had seemed like a heavenly gift. The lord of the manor had sent the taxman away three times and three times was all he allowed but Ham's luck that had run out had returned with the oak. The oak could save them, Ham would sell it downriver—which is why he had bought the boat in the first place—to Derby for a better price than Nottingham. It would have saved them.

But his beautiful Rosie's body was cold still and lifeless, her eyes filmed over and the women kept on wailing. The boys had lost interest and headed for the church. Wedding bells called them while his wife lay dead in his lap. A happy day it was for the lord who had let the king's taxman come into Ham's land and hold the woodcutter's wife under the water till she drowned. He had brought home the oak that could save them.

oo0oo

When Sir Guy of Gisborne was being late he would send Allan A Dale ahead to inform his lady wife. Allan gladly rode to Locksley to a plate of hot food and an early night in. Marian Gisborne—at least he didn't have to call her Lady Marian—was always considerate to the people of Locksley manor and didn't like Nottingham guards in her home so she was usually the only one awake waiting for Guy's return. Whether she was telling Guy of the times she would ride her fine mare to the forest well it was none of Allan's business but he would bet his precious nimble fingers the pair were happy enough in their way and that was that.

It was four hours past sunset on one of those nights when everyone else had gone to sleep with their families and Allan was snoring by the kitchen fire that Marian was startled by a thump thump thump on the door. She was just beginning to acquaint and on occasion reacquaint herself with the Locksley villagers and they were only beginning to come out of their justified shells and approach her whenever they needed something. Two women in the village were heavy with child and she had the only stable of horses. She answered it.

He was a tall tan haired man, with the sort of thick muscle that spoke of lifting heavy things or felling trees, as the shiny ax with the head as big as her own he held to his side indicated and the length of which came up to his hip. "Is something wrong?" she asked but Marian who was not a stupid woman if perhaps impetuous thought of her dagger hairpin in its box in her chamber upstairs and wondered how long it would take her to run across the hall and to the Fitzwalter sword over the mantelpiece.

"I am Ham. The woodcutter." He made to come in but Marian firmly held her ground and he hesitated. He had a dazed look about him.

"And I am Lady Marian of Locksley."

"I have a boat… and timber for sale. For Derby." For all that he struggled with his words Marian's fears began to ease. "My wife—she is dead."

"I am sorry, Ham. What happened?"

"The taxman… Happy day… I bought the boat." Tears fell down his face and dripped down to his brown shirt which Marian saw was already stained with the salty trails of interrupted crying.

"Ham, when did you wife die?"

She saw him adding days in his head and suddenly her fear returned. Twenty paces. "A month. It has been a month without her." It was almost a month since Marian's wedding.

"I assure you the taxman is not coming this week and you may yet sell your timber—"

"I do not care about the timber!" he howled and Marian jumped. "Lord Gisborne let the taxman kill my wife!"

"Ham, listen to me. I want you to leave my house. We may discuss this come morning." She spoke slowly with gestures but he would not focus nor did he seem to listen to her words. Marian thought he was too far gone to listen and twenty paces were far enough that her speed would not make a difference.

"He has sworn to protect and care but all he does is take and he has taken my wife and it is time he should pay his tax." Ham shifted his ax arm. Marian ran for the fireplace.

She threw chairs behind her and heard his ax crush them to splinters. She had five more paces left when the flat of the ax caught her thigh and she twisted with its force and felt it bite her calf. Marian fell screaming.

He stood over her both hands gripping his already bloody ax. He will swing and there shall be no more pain, she thought and the haze was just lurking outside her field of vision. A shadow jumped on the big man's head and he staggered. He moved to throw the shadow —Allan!—off him but Allan held, arms and legs like climbing a tree. The sword, I must get to the sword.

The mantra kept the haze away and Marian lifted her head and her torso and a smashed chair helped her get on her feet. Her left leg with all the warmth pouring down on it so soothingly she discovered could hold her weight even if it sickened her. It was only five paces away, four, the sound of another crash that, three, shook the floor beneath her feet, two, one, it was a heavy old sword and a pull and Marian's feet no longer touched the ground.

He threw her onto the table jarring her whole and cracking her skull against the hard surface. He put his hands around her neck and squeezed. "Tell me how it feels to be starved of air. Tell me how she felt when she died."

Marian's lungs were agony. She twisted, caught a glimpse of Allan sprawled on the floor with blood staining his collar, but Ham's weight held her down. Her arms were free and she held the sword and so she beat at him. Ribs, arms, head, still he wouldn't budge. She wanted to scream for her father, for Robin, for Guy but instead she kept hitting, slashing his ribs again and again and the more she struck the more the hilt was slipping in her palm.

A small sound ravaged her throat but it was a sound, there was air and Ham's thick hands were loosening around her and she looked up to his face to see it slacken as he collapsed on top of her. Marian's arm was still moving but not hacking anymore, there was no strength left in her. Her dress was sticking on her front and right flank wet and warm between Ham and her. She began counting precious hoarse breaths, pockets of life, even the dead weight crushing her down told her she was alive—the pain was proof, it was everything.

It took Thornton and Allan to roll him off her and two more men to carry him out. Marian sat up. She was bathed in blood. She found that someone had bound up her leg. (Did I pass out?) And Guy rushed through the door eyes wide with fear, with terror.

She swallowed once to test her aching throat. "You did this."

oo0oo

The sun took a curved route throughout the day in her chamber and Marian every one hour or so moved her chair a tiny bit and let the light hit her fully in the face, and sometimes she closed her eyes and sometimes she watched the specks of dust dance. She still counted breaths.

A dozen guards were posted beneath her window although she could not see them nor cared to and Guy, she was faintly aware, riding in and out of the village would stop at the bend of the road to peer through her window and at her.

Well I am fine. The Doctor (Djaq in a beard) who had cleaned her wound stitched it closed and then had applied a cool salve said so and recommended she let it uncovered and mostly immobile. The rest of her body was a long throbbing bruise. When she asked her something Marian replied and they exchanged looks half rueful half humorous because they'd been through this sort of recovery before; but nonetheless Djaq was the only one she allowed near her.

But then the sun set while she was watching, Djaq had been long gone, and the time she had given herself to mope ran out. With the help of a fine crutch, Little John had been kind enough to let her borrow his staff, Marian climbed slowly down the stairs in front of the startled eyes of Thornton and a bandage headed Allan whose heated if quiet conversation she had interrupted.

"Marian!" Allan said cheerfully. "There is mutton stew for you if you are hungry." Thornton politely ground his teeth—stew was the only food Allan cooked or believed he could cook—and set a chair for her by the fireplace.

"Lady Marian," Thornton spoke quietly. "I can ask Beth to send over some broth if you prefer."

"Stew is fine. Please give some to the men posted outside too and send them home." Her voice was still rough. "And then you are free to go as well." They did not seem to agree. "Please," she repeated and they, allowing her that much dignity, complied. So Allan was sprawled in his customary place by the kitchen fire even if he weren't snoring when a furious gallop approaching signaled Guy's return.

"Where are the infernal guards!" he shouted storming in but stumbled when he found she was alone in the nothing-happened-here clean, but hollow-feeling-like-a–lost-limp hall. "Marian," was a whisper in comparison.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked still halfway inside the house and she nodded yes, "Have you eaten?" and she nodded yes again, "Do you require anything? Anything at all?" and she shook her head no but he was still standing by the door.

"It's difficult for me to stand. Come sit by the fire." She noticed her fingers were tapping the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling against the arm of the chair. She made them cease.

Guy moved like he was falling towards her landing on his knees next to her. His head as always was not lower than hers. There was terror still in his eyes. "If I were to lose you I would be a dead man walking the earth," he said. She almost laughed for his innate ability to make everything about himself but she was too angry. Yes, angry is the word. And he recognized it.

"No more. No more, do you understand?"

"Wha-?"

"He said you let the taxman drown his wife. He said it was your fault and I was the tax. It cannot happen again." Guy was shaking his head no. "He was wrong and the taxman was wrong, the tax is never a life it can never be a human life but he attacked me and it was agony. I had to kill him." Why was she crying in front of him again and letting him hold her hands? His grip was gentle, his grip was not what hurt her. "I never killed to save myself before, Guy."

"My darling, my love, you were defending yourself. It was a right thing to do."

"No! No more killing, Guy. Look at me." His dark head was lowered now but he had to make him see.

"I have killed so many. Some deaths are surely right."

"You are a lord. When you took Locksley you swore you would protect them and care for them, you are their lord. Why did you let the taxman come, did you know what he would do? How could you know, the tax is never a human life.

"His death was not right, nor his wife's. They killed her on our wedding day I think."

"It will never happen again. My love, my darling," he murmured. She leaned onto him drying her eyes on his sleeve.

"Do you still wish me to be your conscience?" she asked squeezing his arms because it was imperative that he answered yes.

"Yes," he said.

"Together we will make sure you will keep you oath, won't we?" Guy's hair smelled of his sweat, horse and smoke. It was a good smell.

"Yes," he said again and breathing became simple.

THE END

_A/N: It took me some time to write this in order to get used to this version of Marian (and Guy too actually) which in the end I don't find to be that OOC… Opinions?_


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